ELECTION. In theological language, the divine act by which certain individuals are chosen to salvation in Christ. As cxpre-sed in the Articles of Religion of the Church of England. election is the doctrine of everlasting purpose. whereby The lath constantly decreed by secret counsel to deliver from cure and damnation those whom Ile hath chosen in Christ nut of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honor." Pericles this form of the doctrine, there is a lower and a higher form of it, which, apart from technical and polemical language. may he said to spring, the one from the supposed subordina tion of the divine act or purpose to the divine foreknowledge of human conduct : the other from the exaltation of the divine act or purpose into an absolute supremacy, has ing no relation what ever to human will or conduct. The former of these extremes corresponds to the Pelagian or Arminian doctrine of election. the latter to the hyper-Augustinian or The Armin ian aims to condition or limit the absolute char acter of the divine act in redemption in -cute way the Calvinist aims to give to this act the most sovereien character. The one. while not al together repudiating a doctrine of election. yet gives such prominence to the human conditions of the elective purpose as (in the view of the Calvinists) to destroy it altogether; the other maintains not only a doctrine of election or pre destination, but also the correlative doctrine of reprobation. In the view of the Armininn, salva tion is within the choice; of the human will in the view of the Calvinist, the human will is of little or no account—the decree of God is every this decree (which Calvin admitted to be a ilccrctuni horribilc) absolutely determines some to everlasting life and some to death. The separation has its source in the will of God and not in the moral conditions of man kind. Such extremes aside, the great question in
respect to election is whether it depends upon the foreknowledge by God of faith on the part of the elect, or whether faith itself proceed, from grace and is thus conditioned upon election, which is therefore the ground of the foreknowl edge of faith. This question is evidently the question of grace" ( see GRACE I , for election is only the eternal purpose in respect to grace.
Although the expressions election, elect, etc., are frequent in Scripture, it cannot be said that what is known as the theological doctrine of elec tion. was acknowledged by the Christian Church till the time of Augustine. The Greek fathers confined their attention almost entirely to ques tion: purely theological—that is to say. relating to the character and constitution of the God head. Gnostieism and Arianism• the main forms of heretical opinion before Augustine. in dicate the channels into which theological dis cussion had previously run. It was not till the Latin mind had taken up this discussion that the more practical question of the relation of the divine and human will in redemption came to receive special attention. The controversy be tween Pelagius and Augustine in the beginning of the fifth century brought out almost all the aspects of the question have since, at suc cessive epochs in the history of the Church. risen into renewed prominence. The contests between the Scotists and •homists in the fourteenth cen tury. between the Arminian: and Calvinists. and, within the Ronan Church. between the Jansen ist, and Alolinists in the seventeenth century, are recurring expressions of the same radical conflict or divergency of opinion. See FORE